


Like Frostbite

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Grocery Store, Brotherhood, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, hints of - Freeform, or... some sort of superstore idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 22:51:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18303407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Thor responds to a text from his brother Loki, whose illusion magic is acting up again.  It’s difficult, living in a borrowed universe, sometimes.





	Like Frostbite

**Author's Note:**

> Hi~ I hope you enjoy this, if you read it! I… Thought it might be fun to do an AU… And so I wrote most of this when it was slow one day, to clear my head. Sorry for anything I might’ve gotten wrong!!! 
> 
> Also: the minute I decided Loki could be going to an art school here, it was a given I'd include Kenji Uedo from Generation Hope at least a little. So, he gets a cameo. :D
> 
> Thank you!!! Have a great day.

When Thor Odinson got on his lunch break, the rest of his team at the Avengers Assemble Superstore went out to get Thai food.  Ordinarily, Thor would’ve tagged along with them, clapping Tony from the tech department hard on the shoulder when he said something snide, or listening as carefully as he could to whatever Bruce from the warehouse was saying about the incredibly complicated and science-y degree program he was working on.

(It wasn’t that Thor didn’t understand that stuff, mind you.  His father was wise and intimidating as anything, and it turned out his homeschooling curriculum had been…  Somewhat stranger than Thor’d realized growing up?  That was one way of saying it.  He still found it kind of funny how many of his coworkers couldn’t cast a spell and had never been rigorously tested on the ins and outs of to-the-death sword fighting.)

But as it turned out, when Thor had finally unjammed his locker and grabbed his leather jacket – the one with his father’s twin ravens and all those lightning bolt patches on the back, today – he discovered a string of increasingly bitter, frustrated texts from his brother, Loki.

Now, Loki wasn’t _quite like_ Thor, in some ways.  It wasn’t always so easy for him, living among humanity.  At first, for most of their lives, they hadn’t understood it.  They had thought they were blood, both raised far from the same lost home.

No.

 _“It happened again,”_ Loki had written, and then, “ _Dammit.  Thor.  Get over here?”_

A few minutes of silence – as documented by text message arrival times – and: _“I just need to get home.”_

_“I’m in the basement bathroom at school.”_

_“You know I don’t trust anyone here.”_

And he really, really didn’t.  Thor knew that much.  Loki’s trust came so slowly, like snow melting in the shadiest, dampest corners of a street.  Sometimes he barely trusted _Thor_ , it seemed, though when those times came around Thor generally just took him out for drinks or something.  Made dumb jokes until Loki smiled, again, and started telling better ones.  Things hadn’t always been so easy between them.  Loki was in art school, now, though, and their mother said the illusion-magic performance pieces he got to work with were doing wonders for his state of mind.

Thor pulled his shift manager, Steve Rogers, aside as he left.  Said he might be a little late back, but he’d manage it.  His brother needed him.  Steve was generally understanding about that sort of thing.  He said, “Let me know if we can give you a hand, right, Odinson?” with a crisp leader’s smile.  Thor liked to imagine his father might’ve smiled at their people like that, before everything fell apart.  Before they came here, and his smiles stretched so, so thin.

There were too many things about his family Thor just wasn’t supposed to know.  He saluted playfully to Steve and took his thundering motorcycle deep into the city.  When he got back, Thor was supposed to work the register for a couple hours and then assemble a power tool display.  He was allowed to use mannequins and props, all that, this time.  It would be fun, Thor told himself.  This would be easy enough, and Loki would be alright shortly, and then everything would be sort of fun.  He’d style the mannequins’ hair and choose them interesting outfits from around the store.  It would be better than folding clothes or cleaning out dressing rooms, which he’d been doing earlier that day.

Loki’s specialty was illusion magic, but sometimes – when he was “emotionally compromised,” as their father said…  When he was exhausted, when he was using too much of himself to show off in his art classes…  He couldn’t keep his own personal illusions going.  His skin scabbed over with ice, those times, and something like frostbite crawled out from deep in his bones.  He was cold all through, and his eyes were a sharp, accusing red.  _Red eyes on a face like a dead man’s._   Thor hadn’t said that bit aloud, though – Loki had, once, long ago, spitting the words out like they burned his tongue.

The last time someone saw Loki’s black-ice fangs, a rumor started going around that the YMCA by their house was haunted.  Too bad, really – Thor had liked lifting weights there, and Loki was more or less resigned to studying in the smoothie bar.  He kept mixing all the flavors together and cheerfully getting Thor to try the really disgusting ones.

It was happening more and more often, lately.  That loss of control.  It felt like there was something Loki was supposed to know about it.  Something they were supposed to _do_.

It would have helped if Thor could understand why his father talked about a war in such vague, coy terms, every now and then.  It would’ve helped if they hadn’t had to leave…  Wherever they were from…  Before Thor could remember anything useful at all.  There were paintings in the attic of his own self, dressed differently, laughing differently, lounging against a chariot pulled by huge rams.  There was a stone hammer planted in the middle of the floor that – by all rights – should’ve fallen right through the crumbly wood ceiling but that no one, _no one_ could lift.  Thor and Loki had tried it often enough, laughing about King Arthur movies, rubbing their hands together when they started to sting.

Still, though…  Nothing.

Thor knew he’d been born somewhere with different, wilder rules, and quite possibly lived another life there.  A life that smelled like stinging ozone lightning and honey-wine, like roasting meat and the crackle of science-things that would make his friend Bruce’s eyes go very wide.  Science that was magic, magic that was a birthright Thor couldn’t quite reach.  He couldn’t usually remember his dreams, but if he could he suspected he might have woken up a different man.

Loki’s art school was a sprawling, shiny building, all mirrored windows and student displays.  Some guy called Kenji Uedo’s work was being presented, just then: the sculptures sagged ruinously, and Thor wrinkled his nose striding past them.  Rotting meat.  Perhaps the smell was an illusion?  Or again, perhaps not.  A school administrator was arguing with someone very official looking about “Health Hazards” and how protective sealed glass boxes could really be, just then.  Thor walked faster, adjusting the bag tossed his shoulder.  His hair was tied back with one of his coworker Natasha’s hair ties – he’d have to remember to get that home to her, once he made it back to his real world.

No.  That wasn’t fair.

It was easy enough for Thor to make a life beyond the questions about his homeland, about his family, but Loki’s fate would always be his “real world.”  He couldn’t allow himself to become unstuck.  To drift off to Avengers Assemble Superstore karaoke nights and dating app misadventures and road trips…  At least not completely.

Thor was the only one his brother trusted enough to text about something like this, after all.

He trotted down the stairs, grinning cheerfully to Loki’s classmates as he passed.  A lot of them waved back, or nodded, or called out variations of “Hi!” to him.  Thor came through here often enough, maybe as part of a gentle prank Loki was pulling on him, maybe swinging by to drop off forgotten homework.  He wasn’t sure why Loki disliked so many of these people – but then, perhaps one had to be in class with them to really understand.  Thor would have to ask Loki whether this “Kenji Uedo” was someone he had met, before, and why exactly he _wanted_ maggots in his artwork.

Under the earth, this art school became a darker place, with fewer little fountains and iridescent chimes hanging from the ceiling…  More dirty bricks and classrooms still patiently waiting their turns to get fancied up.  Thor thought he knew which bathroom Loki would’ve tucked himself away in.  It had a leak in the corner of the ceiling and had been the chosen lab space when a few of his classmates had decided to build an enormous “interactive ant farm.”  As in, people could reach in and change the ants’ environment, or something?  Loki had explained it, but Thor had been a little stuck on his descriptions of ant furniture and – if all went well with the project – tiny working lights.

Loki’s school seemed like really something.  Point was, not a lot of people used that bathroom after what _happened_ to the ant farm.  Mm.  And, you know, because of the leak.

The air got colder as Thor approached that particular bathroom.  An angry, clutching cold, the sort that traced sharp fingers against your neck and stung your eyes.  Loki’s cold could get much worse than that.  Thor imagined it might have just seemed like the school administrators were getting a little intense with the air conditioning, in certain parts of the basement.  That was good.  Depending on how much illusion magic they could gather up between them, now, they might be carrying Loki’s cold with them back out into the world.

Loki’s car would be here in the parking lot, and Thor would sneak him out to it and drive him home.  Maybe he’d go by a coffee place and get Loki something hot to drink, too; maybe something had happened, that day, and he’d try to remind his brother that he was willing to listen.  That things weren’t the way they’d been between them even just a few years ago.  That he was _there_ , and he’d always be there, and whatever the strangeness in their blood wanted with them they could handle it.

They’d both grown up on so many stories about quests, about honor to gain or lose, about ascension.  Sometimes Thor thought he was standing right on the edge of a story like that, and he could brush it away or let it come.  Loki wouldn’t be so lucky.  Not here.  Not with whatever ice he’d inherited, ice not meant for their new world.

It was easy to remember a time before Loki’s greasy, knowing smiles had been so bitter – sometimes Thor almost forgot the way things had changed.  Not to worry, though.  He was always reminded soon enough.

Loki who’d gotten them both stuck in detention just so often, growing up; Loki who’d been in theater all throughout high school and had duped Thor into helping him practice his lines instead of going to sports practices more times than he could count.  Loki who had once replaced Thor’s pet snake with an _illusion snake_ that had whispered snickery rude things at him all throughout the day.

Thor warmed the thin layer of ice off the bathroom door with a quick spell, something his mother had taught him.  He didn’t pick up magic the same way Loki did, but he had enough to do that.  He strode inside, then, and cleared his throat.  He could see his breath in the air, here.  All the mirrors were crackling into frost-flowers so that he could barely make out his own reflection.  Just a smear of blond hair and black jacket, red work t-shirt.

“Loki?” Thor whispered.  “I made it.”

The stall door at the end of the row creaked open, dripping dirt-stained icicles.  Loki ran a hand through his dark, slicked hair, and gritted his teeth.  “ _I loathe this._   Asking for this,” he confessed.  Each of those words seemed to cost him.  Thor was getting better at reading liquid red eyes, at least.  The first time he had seen Loki’s actual face, he hadn’t known what to say.

“We’ll fix it,” Thor said.

Loki had _so much_ illusion magic.  How did their other possibilities keep reaching him, worming through the cracks in the world and finding him?  _Why?_   Was it an answer that meant explanations, meant adventure?  Or some sort of loss?

“Yes,” Loki said.  “This time, of course, yes.  I – ”

He was going to say some Loki-equivalent of “Thank You,” here, and Thor knew how that would feel with Loki holding his arms around himself.  Glaring at the shifting smudge of blue that was his face in that icy, near-useless mirror.  He stopped Loki before he could make it into the words that mattered, that hurt.

“C’mon.  Let’s see if I can set it right, at least with the cold.  At least until we get to the car.”

Loki nodded, and took a shuffling step forward.  He was so suave, so laughing, with his illusion magic on.  He wore a lot of gold jewelry, and there were emeralds in his ears that day that matched the human eyes their father had chosen for him long ago.

Most of the time, Thor didn’t think of himself as trapped between worlds.  He folded into a pack of new people easily, warmly, and often dragged Loki in after him, rolling his eyes.  Thor had plans for a movie night with his coworkers later on, actually, once his shift was over.  They were going to watch something he’d never seen but that – allegedly – had made the ever-cynical Tony tear up a little once or twice last time.

But of course he knew that wasn’t going to last forever.  And maybe that was a good thing.  Maybe that was as good and honest as Thor leading Loki out of the art school basement without draping on illusion magic at all could have been.  Feeling the sun on frostbitten, impossible skin.  Loki tilting his chin back and closing his eyes, letting his arms fall loose to his sides.  Letting a weight of fear and frustration drop off his shoulders like Thor accidentally dropping his bag into a puddle on the side of the road.

They didn’t do anything like that – not yet.  Thor _did_ invite Loki to his coworkers’ movie night, again, but he wasn’t really expecting him to say yes.

One of these days, though.  Right?


End file.
